Chapter 1: While Rocks Sleep
The air swirls around the obtuse blade. It makes a distinctive sound akin a whip reprimanding my side. I catch the barely recognizable sword before it tumbles in the floor; I had dropped it in surprise.
I can’t avoid it. I fancy myself battling ancient beasts every time I pick up rusty equipment. There’s some of that scrap around. I feel a little more confident; the reference guide said it and now I can attest it.
I reach for my belongings in the saddlebags. I take out a scroll. My eyes gaze with ease on the rolled piece of paper. There, on the side margin, is written: ‘A journey on the world’s ancient paths: journal, fourth week.’
I made the journal with the specific purpose to confirm the existence of the places mentioned in the book, its eponym. I would have my reservations for a book with such title, but it had gained my trust.
I had almost decided to stick the book to the dustiest place in my library. It would have been reasonable: it read like a work of fiction. However, one centimeter towards the middle I found a reference to a place I believed was known only by my relatives.
I read the passage barely avoiding panic; the author had enough loose screws to reveal the location of the—presumed—oldest chaos scar in the world. Who was she? What was her intention? The author’s intention, that is; I still find her characters ludicrous and unrealistic.
I briefly close my eyes and breathe. There’s no need to get agitated. All is fine. I repeat. Everything is mostly fine. Things that didn’t happen, or have not yet happened, aren’t worthy enough distractions; even if that’s why I’m here.
“Twinkleshine,” I call. No answer. Maybe she went to—wait, I did go by my own, isn’t it?
I left to explore alone while she would keep me informed from above. Theoretically. We don’t have a means of communication. I couldn’t convince Twinkleshine to do otherwise; she insisted on staying on the ground level. When I told her—that hard-headed pony— that we would be staying a bit longer to unearth more knowledge, she berated me on how bad the idea was.
She didn’t leave, though. I believe she shares my passion for knowledge, while being a little less… resolute with underground activities. I should ask her if she wants to join my next expedition when I finish my research here.
A more likely explanation is that I may have paid too well. I didn’t know how much one should pay a guide, and I still don’t.
I will be able to continue in this way only if I find anything valuable. Selling its just a necessary material cooperation to evil. The journey has been pointless in economic terms: a year’s savings gone in nothing but tattered tapestries and rotten weaponry I already expected to find. I let the sword rest in peace where I took it. I had gripped it hard enough that its blade bent. I increase momentarily the brightness on my horn; the sword is heavily corroded. I am able to see more of my surroundings.
It’s a basement of sorts. The space is dominated by wide columns which arch in the top, giving the impression of a vault. There is a lot of echo in this room, which reflects its size. I’m thankful for the moss covering most of the floor as it silences my hoofsteps. It wouldn’t be a rarity to find something lurking in this place at this time of the year.
The moon rolls about North. It is the wildest of times: monsoons, blizzards, sand storms, tornados; everything is happening in the world in at least one place at any given moment.
Even below ground, I can hear—or imagine—the wind spitting pebbles at the river, as if it was raining, in almost complete darkness.
“Two months remaining for the next dusk to lit the Everfree”, I recall I said while we were crossing the river. The castle had been within sight for an hour. I hadn’t wasted time and detailed every possible source of trouble to my companion.
“Just stop with with the half hearted pessimism.” She stated calmly, but I knew I had already weared down her mood. “I have enough worries, thank you.”
“I’m sorry, It’s just I love poetic justice... or tragedy. Sometimes I feel like my life is a tale which will be narrated for times to come,” I said with a smile. “It’s a fantasy of mine.”
We continued in silence, below our pale mulberry shield. We arrived more than an hour after, as we had an unexpected encounter with fireplace material.
Creeping monsters, like timberwolves, are only one reason I’m using the least light possible. The other one is banal: I have spent the previous hours making sure there weren’t any spells protecting the area, a painfully slow procedure. I’m tired, frustrated, sore. Continued magic use does a number on light sensitivity.
The castle has been looted decades, if not hundreds of years ago. It is disappointing. There is only debris of the wonders I could be seeing. The floor is teeming with wooden planks. I pick up one sizable piece and examine it. It is another half-burnt cedar rectangle. It is rough from one side. My best guess is that floor wasn’t bare stone as it is now. From previous evidence, I know somepony had tried to used them as combustible for their campfire.
There was a battle here, that’s for sure. I have found several weapons along some, uh, grisly remains. Most of them were ugly pig iron stuff, I can’t even fathom how bandits manage to use that: it’s heavy, frail and weathers badly.
Then, here in the bottom level, I found genuine steel: "a reminder of times when ponykind had proper furnaces and military. When one would have the chance to have proper education. When you didn’t have to steal from national monuments because heartless usurers." That’s what my third great-grandmother said to her great granddaughter. She had a set of armor of the old Royal Guard in her living room for display.
I myself have retrieved and saved my share of ancient times. I’m looking for objects of the historical kind of value. I’m not a thief: I only rescue history. I like to believe that. There is so much knowledge that has been lost due passage of time, and what remains is perishing right now. I admit there is a lot of value in leaving things as is—ding.
An small enchanted clock in my bag tells me it’s time for Twinkleshine to inform me. I shake it to avoid further noises.
I quickly approach the stairs from the opposite corner, checking my surroundings often. I traverse under several pairs of columns until I reach the end. Had I wandered this far?
I get on the stairs. My hooves make a loud sound against the surface I’m stepping.
Chapter 2: Where I Found You
The good news: I found the unexpected; it’s actually a endless stairway. The problem is that I’m currently on it, and it doesn’t have an exit.
I’m sure there’s a crafty little charm set up here. No matter how much I ascend, I see no end. I checked some time after noticing, and I only found myself getting nowhere. It wasn’t by chance that I left a dent on the wall. Either direction gives the same results. Turning around, I can only see the immediate steps. The open space in the middle has been reduced to a single column. It’s disheartening.
I wish I had studied space distortion charms better. They were purely theoretical, it was said, as nopony had found a way to stabilize them without astronomical amounts of energy. Here I am, disproving that notion, and being the only one pony who will know it is possible. For all I know, I might be descending towards Tartarus.
I have probed the magic flux around the walls and it is, well, jumbled up. It’s like walking over a knot whose ends have been sewn together. How’s that even possible? I can’t really feel the ‘outside’ of this tower. I don’t want to know what happens to an object that crosses such cheese grinder of spell. I shiver. I remember I almost made the mistake of teleporting just a moment earlier.
I give up and yell out of frustration. Foolishly, I wait for silence to answer me. I consider my options, for the fifth time.
I would be exhausted before I somehow manage to make a hole in the granitic walls. And that’s considering I can do something about the distortion charm. My hooves have endured about a mile of distance, and they are sore and abraded from grazing with the stone; there is no point in going further. I can’t simply teleport out of here without ending memberless or worse. I'm not strong enough to brute-force the charm. Even if I was, it would surely explode in my face.
Yes, I’m done for. I won’t see anyone again. My remains will only be found by someone who will share my fate. In that case, the likely case, what’s the fastest approaching form of death?
I’m too bored to not consider. I know I will eventually die of dehydration. I have read you can endure at most four days without liquid. Now, if this is a finite space, there is a finite amount of air. I will perish much earlier without breathable conditions. The air reeks of decay and the dust is already making me itch.
Knowing myself, I will become slightly—yet decisively—insane before that time. I mean, there's some philosophers that portray reason as a harbinger of pain. Their words are fun as rhetorical devices until you are trapped enough to doubt reality. Closed spaces are not healthy for the mind. I must not despair, even if it is the reasonable thing to do.
No, no! Bad thoughts out! More dramatically than anything, I raise my hooves towards my ears, as if it would help me. Think about anything… My legs hurt.
I inspect my limb around the pastern, and then I test my hooves. I need to cut on the carbohydrates; laminitis is a terrible sickness... Well, that’s not quite helpful.
I make an impression of getting angry. All I manage is kicking a pebble ‘down’ the stairs. It makes a funny rhythm while falling. With some imagination I manage to hear a limp waltz. Click, clack. One-two-three, one-two. It’s an interesting time signature, for a rock.
I start singing some tune, the only one I know with that tempo. Whatever keeps my mind occupied.
Before, before, the skies freely rode,
on The Wheel, that is, out of resolve.
May the stars never know their fate,
because in the end there’s no date.
I let a small smile in spite of myself. One would say it was written to be listened by me at this precise moment.
Theycried for the lake, for what?
Broken, what it would contain.
May the stars never know their fate,
because tomorrow will have its bane.
I continue on the next verses, where I invent words related to my situation; I may have forgotten the latter parts. I find my legs moving to the rhythm, an odd timed andante.
As I approach the last reprise my muscles tense and my entrails contract. I realize I’m falling. I try to cushion my fall with my magic, but I fail from exhaustion. I land on my side and roll over many steps. I fear I might not live a day more.
There was darkness.
Blink and see.
Vertigo; can’t close eyes; they are already closed. It is too bright, it’s blue and golden, like if it were approaching. What is it? Hill. Silent, huge, peaceful. It wasn’t like that. Why is it so close?
What is? I am? Used to. I saw—no, I see; I see too much, it’s beautiful. Like wind, I like the wind, but this is bigger. It scares. What is the word? Immense. Too close. No, it is not. It is day and night, I see, and then world into itself. I remember. Me and the world, I feared, is nothing and everything. Sublime, that is. Why is it?
I remember. I was too young, so simple. What I wanted was near, was close—certain. I did not know then. Then he told me. He was sad as I was, I recall. He loved me, but he did nothing, and he told me he loved me. I doubted; I didn’t understand then. They were my world, but I didn’t comprehend. He tried too hard and told me what I didn’t need.
Yes, there had been—I saw her face. I wanted her. I miss her. Her words, warm and dull. No, they were not, even if they faded in the air as she went away. Like wind, I try to get her. Embrace her. She hasn’t been there for a long time.
She went away and he couldn’t, but why? I’m crying. A-and then he told me, he would, he would—”Like a grain in the desert, my star, we are,” he said. I would never want otherwise, but he told me anyways, and made me cold.
He said one day he would die too.
I shakily distance from his wet foreleg. I did. And I saw, for the first time, the world. Golden and blue, the Sun and the Moon.
The objects in the distance extended so far they blur. The wind was pushing me and I felt like falling. I turned back; he was crying. I know he didn't want me to ask. He took out a small object. It was a cube with several engravings. He levitated it high enough that I can’t remember what was written on it.
I saw his face, it was full of angst, and I felt small. I hadn’t the right words. I wailed. The spell is cast. It was already done before I set my eyes on the skies. A translucent wave hit us. It spread outwardly, gently vanishing into the two lands.
“It is not what we will miss, it is what we will be because of her,” he spoke too soon, too haphazardly, foolishly even. I wasn’t ready, I sincerely wasn’t, but there was something that called me in the distance; the entire world ensnaring me as she disappeared into the winds, next to the horizon. It was like hearing her parting words.
I understood. The once beautiful transition from the golden, dry pastures to the brisky forest was overcasted by disenchantment. I can say that from hindsight. The young me related it to my mother’s death: it was wrong.
The land, albeit in similar state, wasn’t in death. My young self almost thought so. I was there, we were there, in spite of the hardships. I couldn’t deny the world’s beauty in spite of being broken.
I grew up. I returned several times, brought by a then unknown force. I realized much time later, in the same place, after I got my cutie mark. That pain, the sudden loss, the mourning had been up to that point in my life.. I let go; in a sense, I set her free.
Yet, I still feel bound to all ponykind, her call from beyond the horizon.
Why not?
The air is strangely warm, it weren't so in reality. I take some steps backwards as the landscape wobbles under my hooves. I stumble upon my father’s old cart and I surprisingly break the front axle. A round piece of wood finds it way to my side. I am able to see the sun shining over the whole sky before I decide, of pure resolve, that this was is not my dream.
I perceive my pulse in my ears; it is slow and clogged. I’m only left with an image of what I dreamt. I know the place. It is to the west of Whitetail. I’m not sure if it has a name, but it is an important landmark for merchants reaching for the interior. My father used to call it ‘the huge mound in the border.’
I make a small light. My headache worsens a little. I has been a long time since I recalled the times when we traveled.
I see I’m lying in some stair’s landing with a view downwards. The platform seems stable. I get up, not without pain. I beam up with joy: I didn’t see a platform, not in all the length of the stairs I had traversed. I have found the exit.
On a second thought, I may have been caught. In both senses. Falling down the stairs that violate energy conservation should hurt more. I’m not bleeding and I can move just fine, it’s too good to be actually good.
The end of the stairs makes it’s appearance and I’m impressed; it is huge. With some headache inducing effort I’m able to see the floor. I stare at its intriguing pentagonal tiling. It’s strange: I know I have never seen it before, but I can guess it’s general arrangement.
There is a strange feeling, a warm breeze, which makes me look upwards. It comes from an impossibly high door, seated over two staged platforms. Its color is golden. I stop my attempt to light the room. I can still see it, and now I can feel it: it’s a spell being cast.
Who could live in this abandoned tower? How a room this big is held by such languid staircase? I take a peek behind and find the same narrow stairs. There wasn’t even a tower this wide in the ruins. I jump on the first of the platforms. I nearly fall because they were dark blue. I tell myself confidence while starting again my light spell. The platforms curve around the door. I prepare to jump over the next one. I feel the tiles moving.
The door shakes. I start to retreat. I don’t get the chance to place my hoof on the floor before the door violently opens. I can hear the wood forming splinters. It spews fresh air. Against all sense, I feel myself teleporting at the front of the door. A gentle sound, like rustling silk, is heard. There is silence.
“Hello?” I call. “I’m more than lost and I may be trespassing your property, but I’m sincerely trying to get out.”
Since there was no answer, I continue, “I’m sorry, I thought this place was abandoned. I will return what I have taken.”
I wait. I think about who could live here and how her/his character would be in order to choose staying in a castle in the middle of nowhere. Certainly eccentric, perhaps unreasonable.
To my surprise there is nothing, or rather no one. It’s a roughly cylindrical room with balconies behind translucent blinds and tied curtains. The room is vibrant; it looks like it was refurbished mere years ago. And there is—oh books! Eight tall, stockpiled, bookcases. All the valuable information of lost millennia that could be here!
This is something. This is big. Tremendous. Humongous.
I make my way towards the farthest one. There’s a reading chair, but it’s better not to use it. I pick a book in the left, surrounded by empty places. It finds its way to my hooves. I admire the artwork. It is something I miss from recent books.
It is a tome I have never seen. Supernaturals, huh? I guess somepony is interested in fringe theories.
I pluck another one from the center. The title seems to be garbled upon, but there is a small note under it. Tensors, theory and application to physical phenomena. I have never heard about tensors in my life. This one seems made from more resistant material than the previous book; it’s sheets are smooth and it’s writing crisp. I peek around the middle and find math. I guess it is math because I see many spatially organized symbols, but it has a syntax that I can’t simply comprehend. There are many small notes on the margin.
Perplexing. This book may prove to contain completely unknown theorems. I wish I could understand the language. I put it back taking note of its placement. A small piece of paper falls from it. “Just keep indexes ordered,” it is written in old equestrian.
For curiosity, I take another book near it. Resonance properties of the dense phases of ice. It is really heavy. After a quick inspection, I find that most of the book is filled with tables about, well, ice. There is some jargon I do not recognize, but I can actually read this one.
I place my attention on small book. It caught my attention because of its lack of design. It only has the letters “GUT” imprinted in the front. When I try to open it a cascade of paper falls down the floor. I try to use my magic but the papers literally disintegrate.
The ashes scatter over the wooden floor.
I cry.
What do you need help with, little pony?
I profane the book’s remains and tumble my back to the wall. T-that’s, I, who? It wasn’t spoken.
You are correct.
